When attending a conference, experience teaches, bring along something to read. Thus, seated with my Torah open to the parsha, I was not distraught that the scheduled speaker was predictably late, nor that no one there knew the topic.
An impishly humorous man took the mike, uninvited and unannounced. Most funny people are either depressed or serious; he was serious. He spoke, and I read, both of us relatively content in our roles: he making an occasional joke, me breaking an occasional smile while continuing reading.
Then he began speaking of his father, a man I had never met, but had seen in the streets of Crown Heights. A burly man with a flowing white beard, Russian-style casquet and crutches for his bad foot, the latter a gift awarded in defense of Mother Russia. The family tells of the miracle of the shrapnel that took his leg and spared his life. Funny what people from Russia call a miracle.
After World War II, the young family wanted to leave Russia; with a convoluted reasoning only possible in a secretive bureaucracy, the hero was honored to stay indefinitely in the Motherland. But for a brief few moments, the family thought they might leave. The mother said she wanted to sell all that they had. "All that they had," the impish speaker told us, was two broken beds and three broken chairs.
Sell it all, his father conceded to his mother, but not my s'chach boards.
Sukkot is a nice time to visit Israel. From every balcony and in every courtyard, little booths mushroom in this rainy season. Covering these booths, called sukkas, is s'chach, green foliage: palm branches in Israel and California, evergreens in the northeast United States (which sprinkle the matzo ball soup), and in my native Nashville, whatever happened to be growing in the yard (I still like my Nashville s'chach best). We have our meals in the sukkah, under the s'chach.
In Russia, of course, making a sukkah was an offense, and eating in one punishable with imprisonment. Being caught with illicit tree trimmings this time of year was unheard of. But this then-young Russian war hero was not going to let all that deter him. He got a hold of some wooden boards - which as s'chach would have raised eyebrows in Jerusalem or New England, but are Halachically valid. The speaker told us that his father kept those boards from year to year. During Sukkot, he would sneak to an undisclosed, impromptu booth, place the s'chach boards overhead, and for a few moments, have his Sukkot.
Sell all that we have, said the father to the mother, sell my coat if you have to, he conceded. But not my sukkah-bletlach, not my s'chach-boards.
Our speaker moved on to something else and I turned back to my Chumash. I was up to a particular Rashi comment: Why does the Torah, when discussing the offerings of rich men, the middle class and the poor, reserve the word nefesh, meaning life or soul, exclusively for the poor man's offering? Because, Rashi quotes from the Talmud, the poor man's soul is in his humble offering. It is as dear to the Al-mighty as a man who has given his life.
An impishly humorous man took the mike, uninvited and unannounced. Most funny people are either depressed or serious; he was serious. He spoke, and I read, both of us relatively content in our roles: he making an occasional joke, me breaking an occasional smile while continuing reading.
Then he began speaking of his father, a man I had never met, but had seen in the streets of Crown Heights. A burly man with a flowing white beard, Russian-style casquet and crutches for his bad foot, the latter a gift awarded in defense of Mother Russia. The family tells of the miracle of the shrapnel that took his leg and spared his life. Funny what people from Russia call a miracle.
After World War II, the young family wanted to leave Russia; with a convoluted reasoning only possible in a secretive bureaucracy, the hero was honored to stay indefinitely in the Motherland. But for a brief few moments, the family thought they might leave. The mother said she wanted to sell all that they had. "All that they had," the impish speaker told us, was two broken beds and three broken chairs.
Sell it all, his father conceded to his mother, but not my s'chach boards.
Sukkot is a nice time to visit Israel. From every balcony and in every courtyard, little booths mushroom in this rainy season. Covering these booths, called sukkas, is s'chach, green foliage: palm branches in Israel and California, evergreens in the northeast United States (which sprinkle the matzo ball soup), and in my native Nashville, whatever happened to be growing in the yard (I still like my Nashville s'chach best). We have our meals in the sukkah, under the s'chach.
In Russia, of course, making a sukkah was an offense, and eating in one punishable with imprisonment. Being caught with illicit tree trimmings this time of year was unheard of. But this then-young Russian war hero was not going to let all that deter him. He got a hold of some wooden boards - which as s'chach would have raised eyebrows in Jerusalem or New England, but are Halachically valid. The speaker told us that his father kept those boards from year to year. During Sukkot, he would sneak to an undisclosed, impromptu booth, place the s'chach boards overhead, and for a few moments, have his Sukkot.
Sell all that we have, said the father to the mother, sell my coat if you have to, he conceded. But not my sukkah-bletlach, not my s'chach-boards.
Our speaker moved on to something else and I turned back to my Chumash. I was up to a particular Rashi comment: Why does the Torah, when discussing the offerings of rich men, the middle class and the poor, reserve the word nefesh, meaning life or soul, exclusively for the poor man's offering? Because, Rashi quotes from the Talmud, the poor man's soul is in his humble offering. It is as dear to the Al-mighty as a man who has given his life.